Malicious Attacks and Their Motive

New York, 1895

In the Standard last week appeared an editorial attack on Counselor Van Vechten and Justice Lester which was prompted by malice against Mr. Van Vechten and by politics and malice against Mr. Lester. It was in the essence dirty business. Mr. Van Vechten's bill against the town for $1,500 for legal services was made an excuse for the attack on him, and because Justice Lester did not oppose the audit of the bill the fact is made use of to attack him. The Standard's malice against Mr. Van Vechten grows out of the fact that, as counsel to the board of Supervisors, he detected the Standard in an attempt to cheat the county out of $255, and defeated it. It is for this honest act that he is assailed. Had he permitted the Standard to accomplish its steal of county money, the Standard would fawn upon him as it does upon others who have winked at its crooked work.

The Standard attacks Justice Lester in the hope of injuring him with the people and to make votes for B. Frank Wood, who expects to run on the Republican ticket for Justice of the Peace, with the probability that Mr. Lester will be the Democratic nominee. The Standard's malice against Justice Lester grows out of the fact that he, as a member of the Town Board, favored the contract system for public printing, to the end that the public departments shall be supplied at the least possible expense. It has proved a good thing for the people, but a bad thing for the Standard, as in every competition for work the Standard has been beaten. So the people will see that Mr. Lester is assailed for having honestly performed a public duty, the same as Mr. Van Vechten is assailed for having prevented an extortion of public money.

As an act of simple justice THE FARMER is bound to say that Mr. Van Vechten's bill is not unreasonable. It covers a period of fifteen months, and is in full for all services. There was a vast amount of work to perform and there are lawyers in the town who would not have done the work for the same sum. In the Town Hall condemnation proceedings the court made Counselor Monfort, who appeared for Mrs. Denton and Mr. Herzog, an allowance of $450, and his clients probably paid him $500 more, and yet Mr. Van Vechten is attacked for asking $1,500 for services extending over fifteen months. The malice which underlies the attack destroys the force of it.

The public will not have failed to observe that Justice Lester is the only town officer attacked for auditing the lawyer's bill. This shows again the malice and political intrigue of the Standard. There were five members of the Town Board present, two of them Republicans, and the motion to audit the bill was seconded by a Republican, Mr. Kissam. These facts were suppressed by the Standard because suppression was necessary to its game of falsification and deception to injure Mr. Lester. The Standard did not stop to think that it could not put Mr. Lester in a false position without at the same time making the Republican officers keep company with him, and injuring them in the same measure that it injured Justice Lester. If Mr. Van Vechten's bill would not bear inspection and criticism, it goes without saying that it would not have been presented for audit two weeks before election.

There has been nothing in journalism or politics in recent years so despicable as this. If every man who does his duty honestly and fearlessly is to be maliciously assailed the public welfare is threatened and anarchy and fraud usurps the place of reason and morality.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, March 22, 1895, p. 4.

Note: There's a poem about some of this, called "The Man From Georgia," at this link. Just going by the poem and the above article and this other article, the man from Georgia was B. Frank Wood, recently the "proprietor" of The Jamaica Standard, the Farmer's arch rival. Obviously the Farmer preferred Justice Lester as J.P., predicting, "After January next" Lester's name will have after it, "J.P."!